Sermon for 15th January 2017. The Revd. J. Michael Povey at St. Boniface Church, Siesta Key, FL
Biblical Text. John 1:29-42
The next day he ( John the Baptiser) saw Jesus coming
toward him and declared, “Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the
world! This is he of whom I said, ‘After me comes a man who ranks ahead of
me because he was before me.’ I myself did not know him; but I came
baptizing with water for this reason, that he might be revealed to
Israel.” And John testified, “I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like
a dove, and it remained on him. I myself did not know him, but the one who
sent me to baptize with water said to me, ‘He on whom you see the Spirit
descend and remain is the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.’ And I myself
have seen and have testified that this is the Son of God.” The next day
John again was standing with two of his disciples, and as he watched Jesus
walk by, he exclaimed, “Look, here is the Lamb of God!”
The two disciples heard him say
this, and they followed Jesus. When Jesus turned and saw them following,
he said to them, “What are you looking for?” They said to him, “Rabbi” (which
translated means Teacher), “where are you staying?” He said to them, “Come
and see.” They came and saw where he was staying, and they remained with him
that day. It was about four o’clock in the afternoon. One of the two who
heard John speak and followed him was Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother. He
first found his brother Simon and said to him, “We have found the Messiah”
(which is translated Anointed). He brought Simon to Jesus, who looked at
him and said, “You are Simon son of John. You are to be called Cephas” (which
is translated Peter).
My Sermon.
Here is
John the Baptiser still down by the Jordan.
He is no longer attracting huge crowds; there are only two of his
disciples with him. His hay day is over.
He knows it, and he accepts it.
Jesus
comes sauntering by. The background music is Gershwin’s “Walking the Dog”. John exclaims “Here is the Lamb of God who
takes away the sin of the world”, and a lot of other stuff.
Same
place, next day. The peregrinating Jesus passes by. John the Baptiser has an ear worm. He lets it
loose with “Look, here is the Lamb of God”. Same words different day.
This time
his two disciples having switched off the Gershwin listen to John. They not only listen, they hear. One of them
is Andrew the Inquisitive. (Remember that
he is the one whose inquisitive nature led him to spot a lad in a hungry crowd
of 5,000, the lad who has five barley loaves and two fishes). Andrew the
Inquisitive. He is not only inquisitive,
he is also prudent. He will not be a Lone Ranger. So he calls to his brother “Hey Simon, get
your legs over here and come with me”.
Andrew
and Simon begin to stalk Jesus. Jesus,
maybe even a wee bit annoyed, calls out “what in the blazes are you looking
for”. Their answer, “where are you staying?” seems to be a bit
anti-climatic. Did they think that Jesus
was holding an open house that day?
Our
former Rector Ted Copland made a suggestion for which I am grateful. “Where are
you staying” means “where can we find you to listen to your teaching?” Jesus replies “Come and see”, which is
another way of saying “follow me”.
Jesus
will say “follow me”, or “come and see” to others, and so is launched the Jesus
movement. It all but falls apart when
he is crucified, but coincidental with his resurrection the Jesus Movement is
revived. For good or ill that movement morphs into the Church, that world-wide
body which has been hanging around for nearly two thousand years, and generally
speaking has made a pig’s ear of following Jesus.
Since the
days of the Roman Emperor Constantine the Church has focused its energy and
purpose not on being a loving, forgiving, serving body in which we with joy and
tears learn to follow Jesus, but on status, authority, numerical growth, money
and power.
But the
game is up. Much of Europe, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the
United States are now post Christian societies. We have yet to understand
this. We carry on as if it will be
ecclesiastical business as usual. Meanwhile the popular and dominant culture
has smirked, giggled or averted its eyes as the Church continues to parade in
its expensive and fancy dress – but in fact is naked.
Fewer
than 4% of the British people attend Church on a regular basis. The Church of
England is facing extinction. It’s most
recent plan to address the decline is to suggest that its future Bishops should
have M.B.A’s, in order to be more
effective leaders.
We might
be tempted to believe that Bishops should be teachers of the faith,
theologians, women and men of prayer, evangelists, leaders with dirty hands who
have struggled with the poor in the fight against oppression (and the poor are oppressed in the U.K.).
What a
naïve, impracticable and cute idea. You silly people, we need Bishops who are
C.E.O’s in order to manage us out of, or into decline
.
In the
Episcopal Church our attendance declined by 26% between 2005 and 2015. Congregations are folding or merging all over
the land. We thought of ourselves as
Neiman Marcus. We have become K-Mart.
Our
average age – nationally – is 57 (this means that St. Boniface is above
average).
The
Diocese of South West Florida has 30,000 active baptized members - but the
average total Sunday attendance is only 13,000. Burials are outstripping
baptisms.
The trend in declining attendances
didn’t start yesterday.
One of
the congregations I served has now closed
.
Because of shrinking membership and
attendance, another is about to enter an arranged marriage – a merger with a
similarly declining congregation.
I was Rector of a parish between 1984 and
2000. Each year as I totaled the vital
statistics I would see a reduction in attendances. Each year I would see fewer children in
Church school.
Bit by
bit, drip by drip the parish was declining.
When it is bit by bit, drip by drip you hardly notice it. But sixteen
years on, when I visited that same congregation last December - good Lord above - the shrinking of the congregation could not
be missed. It’s a place with good people, and a
wonderful Rector, but it is in numerical decline. It is in a County where there
were fifteen congregations. Now there
are eight.
There is
cold comfort in noting that the Episcopal Church is not the only one in
decline. There are similar patterns in the United Methodist Church, the United
Church of Christ, the Lutheran Church, the Disciples of Christ, and the
Presbyterian Church. Even the much
vaunted Southern Baptist Convention is losing members.
Where have all the people gone?
For the most part they have not left in anger or despair. They have simply drifted away. Perhaps they have more options and choices
for Sunday morning and Wednesday evening.
Perhaps they are just too tired to rouse themselves on Sundays. Perhaps they cannot be bothered.
Maybe they find no compelling reason
to be in Church. When I was in Cambridge MA we had a
fabulous cadre of youth. At one time ten of them were “preacher’s kids” and
none of them fought against Church attendance.
They loved it. Ten years on they
are in their mid-twenties, careers in place and marriages in place. None of them now attend Church. Well they do, nothing would keep them away
at Christmas and on Easter Day. They have become twicers.
I’ve
talked with some of them. They have fond
memories of Church. They are fascinated with Jesus and his teaching. But they
have disdain for a Church which is obsessed with status, authority, numerical
growth, money and power.
Why are people not joining us?
It’s very hard to enter a Church for
the first time. It’s so scary that people rarely do so.
Just for
fun, and because I am ornery I’ve snooped into other congregations in Sarasota
in recent years.
I went to
one of those pop-up and growing evangelical Churches which often meet in rented
premises. I got a warm hand shake as I entered. As I found a seat I looked at
the big screen on the platform. It bore the message “sit with your @ group this
morning”. (@ group is what they call their small groups. Guess what that message said to me? It said “you are only welcome here if you are
a member of an @ group”.
I went
one Sunday to the biggest Mennonite Church in Sarasota. The front door welcome
was o.k. I sat at the end of a long
pew. The gentleman who sat next to me never once even looked at me.
It’s very hard to enter a Church for the first
time.
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People
are most likely to attend Church for the first time when they are invited by
a member. It’s the biblical
principle of “Come and see”.
Remember that
Andrew first found his brother Simon and invited him to “come and see”.
If St. Boniface is to grow it will be
when we say “Come and see”.
But what
will they see? Will they see people who
want the Church to be the way it always was? Will they see people whose modus operandi
at home, at work and in the Church is to do no more than survive and or to hang
on to what they have? Will they see people who are gripped by fear and despair
but who mask those fears on Sunday mornings, and whistle a happy tune.
Or will they encounter a people who
are crazy about Jesus, finding in him their way, their truth and their life.
We are
blessed to have a fine Priest in the person of Wayne Farrell. Wayne we like you, and we are learning to
love you.
You are
here to be a Priest, not to be a C.E.O. Don’t
try to manage us into success until you have learned how to herd cats.
Make
mistakes; get it wrong by all means. We will forgive you about almost
everything except apathy about Jesus and his teaching.
Help us
to “come and see” that Lord Jesus Christ whose teaching is so very difficult;
whose presence delivers us from our darkest fears; whose death frees us from
the power of sin; whose resurrection leads us into abundant life. Help us to be
a people who know this to be true: “I
come with joy to meet my Lord,
forgiven, loved and free”, and “Together met, together bound we’ll go our
different ways, and as God’s people in the world we’ll live and speak his praise”.
Or to put
it another way we ask you Wayne, together with our new musician Dr. James
Guyer.
**Give us Jesus, Give us Jesus.
You can take all this world, but give us Jesus.
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** I sang this as part of my sermon
today, hoping
to plant an “ear worm” into the minds of those who heard me.
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What follows is background material which I used when preparing to write
the sermon.
I
confess that we have grown cold. That we have lost sight of our True Love. And
together we have forgotten the cross: the self-sacrificial love of the One who
calls us to go and do likewise. Oh, American Church! I am you and you are me.
And together we have grown judgmental, folding our hands and closing our doors.
Have we forgotten that we were once the ones on the outside looking in? Have we
forgotten that our salvation is a gift given to us, that we are but jolly
beggars at the door of the Gift-Giver himself?
Maybe I’m the last one to see this dilemma. The millions who are
fleeing institutional Christianity in America aren’t escaping bad doctrine,
shoddy performance values or inconvenient calls to mission. They are escaping
the institution itself.
It doesn’t have to be this way. God certainly doesn’t want it
this way.
I think, for example, of the performance anxiety that infects
most churches. We needn’t worry so much about pleasing constituents on Sunday.
Worship isn’t a Broadway show; it’s a glimpse of God, not a celebration of
style, excellence and self.
I think of our leadership conflicts. Pastors aren’t CEOs hired
to maximize shareholder returns. They aren’t impresarios rewarded for putting
on great shows. Pastors are flawed creatures called to help other flawed
creatures bring their neediness to God.
Church should be a safe place — safe to be oneself, safe to make
one’s confession, safe to love whoever one feels called to love, safe to
imagine more, safe to fail. Instead, church often is a dangerous place, where
people feel guarded, self-protective, hemmed in by tradition and expectation,
required to obey rules.
Tom Ehrich is a writer, church
consultant and Episcopal priest based in New York.
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News report from the installation of Joseph Tobin as Aarchbishop (and Cardinal) in Newark, N.J.
To believe in Jesus “is not acceptance of a doctrine or a moral
code, but of a person who lives now and is the source of life — and not just on
Sunday morning!” Cardinal Tobin told an overflow crowd that included thousands of
worshippers and hundreds of nuns and priests from Newark, Indianapolis and
Tobin’s own Redemptorist order.
“The church senses a responsibility for the world, not simply as
yet another institutional presence or a benevolent NGO, but as a movement of
salt, light and leaven for the world’s transformation,” Tobin said. “For this
reason, our kindness must be known to all.”
He said that joy must be the hallmark of the church today as it
was for the earliest Christians who lived through much more difficult times.
“Rejoice,” Tobin concluded, “because we will grow in unity and
humility and, in the process, discover joy and peace in our life together.
Rejoice, because our kindness will be known to all: to the searching young and
the forgotten elderly, to the stranger and the voiceless, to the powerful and
the cynical.” (Cardinal Joseph Tobin)
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